[whatwg] alt and title attribute exception

[Steve Faulkner]

Hi Henri,

you wrote:
"Firefox for Android (at least on the Nightly channel) displays the
content of the title attribute on XKCD comics (up to a length limit
which can often be too limiting) upon tap and hold:
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/screen/xkcd-firefox-for-android.png"

that's useful data, too bad about the truncation issue, as I pointed out in
my recent email to the list, that is an issue for both alt/title fallback
on some desktop browsers.

philip wrote:

" it seems unwise to recommend using the title attribute to convey
important information."

The title attribute has sever limitations in its utiltity, if one goal is
to provide accessible content, I detailed some some cases where it should
and should not be used [1]

"Indeed. In addition to image considerations, I think
http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#footnotes is bad
advice."

I agree and have detailed the reasons why [2]

[1] using the HTML title attribute
http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/2010/11/using-the-html-title-attribute/
[2] http://www.w3.org/html/wg/wiki/ChangeProposals/notitle_annotations

regards
Stevef


> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 5
> Date: Wed, 1 Aug 2012 15:56:23 +0300
> From: Henri Sivonen <hsivonen at iki.fi>
> To: whatwg <whatwg at whatwg.org>
> Subject: Re: [whatwg] alt and title attribute exception
> Message-ID:
>         <CAJQvAufAJp=PN=gAKD3oUCL4suwwWdMg6=
> cfbqewrvgipvSWyg at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>
> On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 12:18 PM, Philip J?genstedt <philipj at opera.com>
> wrote:
> > When this was last discussed in the HTML WG (January 2012) I opened a bug
> > (MOBILE-275) for Opera Mobile to expose the title attribute in our
> > long-click menu, arguing that one could not enjoy XKCD without it. I
> meant
> > to report back to the HTML WG but forgot, so here it is. Unfortunately,
> the
> > bug was rejected... quoting the project management:
> >
> > "Sure it is nice to have, but noone else has it so we will not put our
> > effort into this"
>
> Firefox for Android (at least on the Nightly channel) displays the
> content of the title attribute on XKCD comics (up to a length limit
> which can often be too limiting) upon tap and hold:
> http://hsivonen.iki.fi/screen/xkcd-firefox-for-android.png
>
> Not to suggest that XKCD's title usage is OK but just to correct the
> "noone else" bit.
>
> > it seems unwise to recommend using the title attribute to convey
> important information.
>
> Indeed. In addition to image considerations, I think
> http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#footnotes is bad
> advice.
>
> --
> Henri Sivonen
> hsivonen at iki.fi
> http://hsivonen.iki.fi/
>
>
>